


be here for now

by jumbi



Category: Super Paper Mario (Game)
Genre: Cuddling & Snuggling, Dreams and Nightmares, Dreamsharing, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Fluff, kissing is weird when you don't have a normal mouth, postgame, what are ao3 tags
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-12
Updated: 2020-07-08
Packaged: 2021-02-27 11:47:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 18,484
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22226620
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jumbi/pseuds/jumbi
Summary: even if they both have topics they will worm their way out of discussing at any cost, blumiere and timpani love each other very much.
Relationships: Count Bleck & Nastasia, Count Bleck | Blumiere/Lady Timpani | Tippi
Comments: 14
Kudos: 35





	1. restless

**Author's Note:**

> you don't need to read my comic "filling the void" to understand this story, but i like to consider it canon anyway.  
> timpani gets a little handsy, so i'm going to put this under the "teen" rating just in case. it's nothing non-con or anything like that.

It was one of those restless periods for her, Blumiere noted, idly watching her brush her teeth through the open door. Even from the awkward angle, lying in bed, he could see how her artificial hand was clenched against the brush, how she carelessly swept it back and forth. His ear twitched at a small noise through the closed window. Perhaps one of the baby birds had bumped into the dish again. He’d have to check the alignment.

At some point while he was occupied considering how he could deter the birds from bumbling into his roof project, Timpani had wiggled under the covers. “You forgot to take off your monocle,” she said, reaching to gently pluck it off his face. He blinked at the sudden change in his vision while she leaned over him to put it on the night stand.

“I merely hadn’t taken it off yet,” he mumbled. “What if Count Bleck wished to read?”

He felt the lightest brush of magic that always came with Timpani’s scrutiny. But she let it go. “Oh yeah? Where’s your book, then?” She was still kneeling over him, brows playfully drawn together in a mock accusation.

He smirked and closed his eyes, drawing his hands beneath his head under the pillow. “I memorized one. It is on the back of my eye lids.”

Then Timpani let herself drop and slammed into his chest, knocking the wind out of him. He instinctively drew his arms forward, but they were blocked by the pillow, so he struggled clumsily while Timpani crawled until she was straddling him, knees planted at his sides, leaving him free to catch his breath.

She brushed her fingers under his ears. “I didn’t hurt you, did I?”

“No,” he gasped, angling his arms to drape them over her neck. He opened his mouth to continue, but found the rest of his sentence missing. He had wanted to compare her to someone… Someone else liked to slam into him that way… His train of thought was diverted as Timpani leaned in close.

“You can’t force your memories back, Blue,” Timpani whispered into his mouth. The cotton candy of her toothpaste invaded his taste. “You’re here. Be here for now. Maybe you’ll have more tomorrow.”

Something deep inside him grew exhausted, and his eyes squinted shut. Timpani’s lips pressed against his fangs. He held his face carefully still. He ran his gloved hands up the back of her head, through her short hair, but the fabric deafened most of the feeling. But he would be too uncomfortable, touching her with his bare claws, at such risk of nicking her. Humans had such thin skin.

It would be nicer, he thought, if he could return Timpani’s affection in a way humans enjoyed more, as she explored his face. He looked up at her with his good eye, but all he could see of her was her neck.

Well. _That_ was a strange urge. He felt his pulse in his chest and throat as he desperately held still, as Timpani pulled back, her fond gaze nearly glowing. A weak smile was all he could manage. His hands traced down her head to her shoulders and rested there, and she drew near again. Perhaps she had misinterpreted his expression, but-

He hesitated. But his mind was stuck broken-recording, and before he could stop himself he was pulling Timpani close, resting his mouth against her neck. Her only protest was a surprised grunt. He could never bite down. With his fangs barely apart, not to pinch her, heat hissed out of his mouth, and Timpani _shuddered_ as she pulled back, slapping a hand to her neck.

“What was _that_ ,” she complained, rubbing her neck, her lip just barely curled.

Blumiere let go of her and wrung his hands together. “I-it, um,” he spluttered. His whole mouth and throat felt hot.

“Were you trying to bite me? Were you going to suck my blood?” She smirked. “Were you trying to steal my magic for yourself? You have enough already.”

“It was a kiss!” he squawked.

Timpani’s mouth hung open, her train of thought derailed.

He folded his arms and looked away. “A little one.”

But that only made her grin grow wider. “Blumiere… you tried to kiss me back?” She laughed and brushed back his puffed-up fur. “You’ve never done that before.”

“C-Count- I- er,” he gave up, poking his fingers together. The room was growing quite warm, or perhaps, he hoped he wasn’t heating up the air.

She pawed at his hair, but it refused to settle down. “The Tribe of Darkness kisses by blowing hot air on your neck?” When he didn’t respond, she sat back. Blumiere scooted back, out from under her, and started sitting up. “I guess you wouldn’t know,” she said, more quietly.

“Th…” He closed his eyes and tried again, Timpani’s breath heavy against his ears. He had seen it, sometimes, there had been a man and woman… “There is usually, I think, biting involved.”

She reached out again and trailed her fingers along the rougher fur on his neck. “That makes sense. It wouldn’t hurt you.” Her hands found their way down to his chest, and she thumbed at the top button of his shirt. “Well, thank you for being careful. It was _very_ romantic.”

He must have been making a particular face, because she laughed again and turned her focus to the shirt button.

“I’ve been thinking… maybe…” she mumbled distractedly as she worked her way down.

Blumiere interrupted her, gently resting his hand on her wrist. She looked up at him.

“I’m not ready to sleep yet,” he said. “You do not need to remove my shirt for me. Count Bleck can do it himself. I wanted to see something on the roof before I-”

“Oh!” Timpani sat up rigidly straight and put her face in her hands. “Oh, right, um,” she stammered. He could see hints of red flushing around her ears and between her fingers. “I… I’m going to take a shower,” she announced, fumbling her way out from under the blanket and nearly tripping as she stepped to the floor.

“Careful, you should watch where you’re…” he paused. “Didn’t you just take a shower?”

“I… um…” She clenched her fists. “I-I just like the shower!”

He blinked confusedly as she stumbled into the bathroom and closed the door, and then busied himself with re-buttoning his shirt. When the phone suddenly buzzed next to him he yelped.

_Theres nothing wrong. The room was just getting 2 me. Im taking a cold shower and then ill be ready for bed. <3 –T_

Blumiere set down his phone. That would give him just enough time to check the roof, he figured.

The bird had simply gotten wedged between two shingles. He wasn’t sure how it managed to fit in there, the angle must have been so specific… He watched it fly off, for a moment. As silly as it was to see Timpani get so flustered at his apparent ignorance, he just didn’t have the heart to try to explain. He just never had the same feelings he saw others have, even for the one he loved most. But that distant light and the murky bells at the edge of his memory had confirmed their love, and that was good enough for him.

When he returned through the window, Timpani was already sitting in bed, book in hand.

“Think we can get all the way through Chapter Three before you fall asleep this time?” She grinned.

Blumiere rolled his eyes. “Definitely not. Let us try for halfway.”


	2. lost

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> blue and timpani spend a day in the woods.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> happy pride month

Unfortunately, it was a bright and sunny day. Blumiere would have preferred the weather cooler and darker, perhaps to reflect his mood, and more because even looking out the window across the field and to the little village down the road was nearly blinding him. The pain at the brightness was like two tiny lances into his head.

But he couldn’t seem to tear his eyes away from the window. The morning light filtering through the glass was warped and redirected, and too bright, so he pulled the pane open and squinted at the cloudless sky. The birds in the nearby tree called and chirped and he watched them flit between the branches for a few moments. The younger ones were becoming a little more graceful in the air, as the nights grew shorter and the days grew warmer. It was quite strange, how the weather was changing so dramatically with time. It was never this warm, back in-

Blumiere’s fingers clenched against the windowsill. _This is really not a good time_ , he sighed inwardly, and turned away from the light just to get moving. Maybe he could distract himself in the kitchen. He made his way around their cozy little bed, with the familiar checkered blanket, and glanced at the clock on their dresser. The numbers jittered behind the bright spots, left behind from the sun and the sky, so he gave up and kept moving. His ears twitched at the birdsong, following him down the shaded hallway out of his and Timpani’s bedroom. He idly flicked the lights on and off a few times, considering the oven that rested between two short countertops.

Ah, right, he couldn’t bake right now. Timpani was out getting eggs. He had meant to attend to something while she was gone…

He floated over to the polished wooden table and braced his weight against the surface while he examined the papers, spread out haphazardly. But the handwriting seemed a little too loopy, and even tilting his head for a better angle, the letters didn’t make as much sense as he was hoping for. Fear buzzed within his forehead and around his temples. _This is really, really not a good time_. He glanced up at the calendar, hanging next to the window above the sink.

Some of the days were marked, with notes scrawled underneath, but he was having trouble parsing their meaning. Was today’s date already marked, for some reason? It was so hard to tell.

Perhaps the television, then. He knew what the power button was. He could envision it, nudging the dark clouds aside in his mind, and the volume control, and the channel navigation. So he picked up the remote control and fumbled with the red button, and flopped back on the couch, firm and coarse. Timpani had wanted to find a better one, but Blumiere found the seating fine. The furniture had been a gift, anyhow. And he had never received a gift before.

His eyes squinted shut. He curled against the back of the couch and tried to ignore the sweat trickling down his forehead. The screen flashed with images, and there was a grainy sort of sound. A voice, with some simple instruments. He adjusted his monocle and swiped the sweat away. His mind feebly grasped at his missing internal to-do list as he tried to remember which of his roof projects could enhance the sound.

“ _We’re back, with: Secrets of the Ancients’ Castles_ ,” proclaimed the television. Blumiere blinked at the screen, realized his monocle was still askew, and fixed it, so that the screen came into better focus.

As the screen scrolled around old architecture and enchanted stones and a pleasant voice rattled off an introduction to the Tribe of Ancients, Blumiere froze. Something in his mind flinched away from the words and retreated, leaving him reeling. The world began growing muddled and strange. He panted, for a few seconds, desperately trying to move his focus onto anything else. But it was too exhausting to hold on. After a moment, he gave up, he sighed, he fell back against the couch, and he let the haze bury him.

_… What is this place…_

A light, changing color, in front. Walls all around… something against the back. His hands pressed against the surface.

_Unpleasant. Stand._

_Shouldn’t be here._

A very strange place… How did he get here? There were colors and shapes, within this little area. A muffled, grainy sound, distant and small. But trying to define the sound was exhausting. Better to leave it.

He drifted down a narrow, shaded passage, unseeing.

_Where is…? Where is…_

_She is missing._

This place was too small. She would never be here.

_Who…?_

Far away, a more piercing, shrill sound. A square of light. Air moved through it…

_Find her._

“It’s so hot today,” Timpani complained, putting a hand to her brow and letting her fist slide down her face.

“What are you talking about? It’s nice.” Georgie scrunched her nose and squinted at Timpani. Her frown knocked her big glasses askew, but she didn’t bother fixing them. “It’s normally hotter, by May.”

Timpani huffed and shifted the weight of the basket in her other arm. She fussed over the arrangement of her bags. “This is hotter than it ever got back at home… Your winter was so cold, too!”

Georgie put a hand to her broad chin and slowed down for a moment. Timpani had hardly pulled two steps ahead, though, before she came trotting right back up, her dark frizzy hair bouncing around her shoulders even in the heat. Timpani wasn’t sure that _anything_ would make the woman’s hair smooth down. “Sometimes it’s hard to remember you’re not from around here.”

Timpani snorted. “The arm doesn’t give it away?”

“Just! When I think about other worlds, I don’t think ‘fellow human’, you know? I think about, like, Maurice. Or Blumiere.”

“I thought you said the tea shop was a quick walk! He’s going to get worried…” Timpani frowned, glancing at the sun creeping into ‘midmorning’ territory.

“It would have been, if you weren’t being so pokey! You’re such a wimp about the weather.” Georgie stepped up her pace, forcing Timpani to strain to keep up.

“At this rate, I could have just told him to come along.”

“You two really need to get over your separation anxiety. Be your own person, Tea! Pick out your own mugs.”

Timpani simply groaned in response.

That was when her right arm withered and fell away into nothingness right out from under her basket. It dropped to the ground with a muffled _crack_ , and her groceries bounced out and spilled onto the pavement. She stared down at it for a moment, mouth open but not quite managing to find any words, and then she turned on her heels and bolted back down the path out of town.

“Tea- wait!” Georgie bundled up the groceries and basket in her spare arm and took off after her. “It’ll be okay! We all know what to do!” she called, but Timpani kept sprinting, her long skirt billowing with each long stride.

The air was oppressive, and her balance was off, but Timpani hardly noticed even her pulse in her ears or her unsteady breath, or the hard jolt of each step on the road against her shins and knees, as she hurtled back down the pavement and out to the path leading up the hill into the loosely-collected neighborhood. She tackled their front door shoulder-first and staggered back when it didn’t budge. She was just rearing up to kick the door down when she realized that she had the keys; she fumbled the little metal piece out of her pocket with a sweaty hand, and then turned the handle. That gave her a moment to struggle for air before she nearly fell into their front room.

“Blue?” she called, between gasps. “Blue, I’m here, is everything okay?”

But the house was dark. She heard voices crackling in the next room over and reflexively sprang into action, her sandals squeaking against the tiled floor of the kitchen. Bracing her left hand against the door frame to bring herself to a skidding halt, her gaze flew wildly around the room. But it was just the television, its light grainy and wavering, enthusiastically telling a story about some kind of building.

“Blumiere?” she tried, one more time, to no avail. He was gone. Birds chirped, somewhere nearby, so she limped down the hall to their bedroom and discovered the open window, the curtains still and heavy in the heat.

 _Of course_. Why had he opened the window? It had been his own idea to keep them closed and locked, so that he wouldn’t wander off…

Her exhaustion caught up with her, finally, and she sank to the floor against the wall. She heard the front door close behind her, softly, and some fussing in the kitchen as Georgie put away the surviving perishables and shut off the TV. Then, footsteps, as her friend came to join her by the bedroom doorway.

“He could’ve gone anywhere,” Timpani moaned. She scrubbed her sweaty hand down her face, feeling her cheek pull just a little, and then her lip.

Georgie eyed the stump where Timpani’s right arm used to be, cut off and scarred above the elbow. Her clunky glasses were already beginning to clear, out of the direct sunlight, so Timpani met her stare. She finally set the glasses straighter on her nose. “That was just a couple minutes ago. He can’t have gone far.”

Timpani leaned her head back against the wall. “Yeah… Yeah, okay. I need a glass of water and then we’ll split up and go get him.”

“It can’t be as bad as the time he went out in the snow at night, right?” Georgie elbowed her. “He’s fine.”

Timpani’s response was to roll forward onto her feet and stumble back toward the kitchen. Her husband could resist the cold, but his magic offered him no such protection against the heat. Maybe she could narrow down her search to shaded areas- though, the forest outside of the neighborhood was a bit of a walk, and it would be hard to search all of it in a day. Especially if he kept moving.

Probably a good idea to bring some food and water.

Neither Georgie nor Timpani had seen Blumiere along the path to their home, so Georgie hung back to scour the neighborhood while Timpani marched farther down the path toward the woods.

The sun crept past its peak and began sneaking back down toward the horizon as the hours passed. Timpani’s supplies began to dwindle as she snacked to try to conserve her energy. She called out regularly, checking under giant root systems and down rocky outcroppings and even keeping her eye up toward the branches high out of reach. It wouldn’t do her any good to stop and listen; there were no footsteps to listen for, no stumbling or shuffling leaves. The best she could do was just keep moving, and hope that she could spot him wandering under the dappled light of the forest canopy.

She bit her lip, to try to avoid wondering how the others always found him. She probably should have let him talk about them, a little more, or talk about this “illness” outside of the safeguards he attempted to put in place, to keep himself from getting lost.

It would have been better, to have a little more of it, before he lost it all. And now she couldn’t give it back to him.

If it ever came back… Timpani sighed, and it grew into a groan. She really didn’t want to. But if it ever came back, she would have to ask him about it. She would have to hear about… the others. About that period of his life.

Her fist tightened around her bag’s strap.

It would have been nice, to stumble across him at that point, to interrupt her thoughts. But she was stuck with them. She was stuck with them, distracting her like a cloud of gnats, until the trees’ shadows grew long and dark, and then the sky darkened above the canopy. She ran out of food. Then, her bag grew lighter and lighter with her dried water supply, and heavier and heavier with her dread.

And then it was dark enough to pick out the red glow of his eye, illuminating a mossy rock in the distance. She had to squint, to see it, but she definitely spotted the change in light whenever the boulder was out of her focus. So she hiked that way. Her feet were blistering against the dress sandals, not built for walking and stepping over rough terrain all day. She limped over to the boulder and found him, staring at nothing, hanging just above the ground like a puppet with the strings cut. Her gut twisted. Maybe she wouldn’t have to look at his face, she could just take his hand and he’d wake up and take them home.

But when her hand touched his, all she got was the usual flat “ _Unhand Count Bleck._ ” The usual unpleasant tingle shot up her spine and into her shoulders and neck at the nails-on-the-chalkboard tone to his voice.

They were so turned around. She hadn’t seen this part of the woods yet. She wasn’t sure how to get home. Timpani struggled one-handed with her bag, trying to fish out her phone with shaking, starved fingers. But it was too hard. Instead, she turned toward Blumiere, who was still staring somewhere between the ground and the base of the rock. The glow from his eye was becoming more pronounced as the shadows around them grew deeper. Timpani shook off the deeply-ingrained prey instinct to be on edge around such a powerful creature of the night. _It’s just Blue_.

Maybe… She hesitated. But it was worth a shot, right? Surely he’d recognize her, surely she could reach him, trapped just under the surface. Then they could go home together. She just had to reach out…

She cupped her hand just under his ear and tried to guide his head toward her. Timpani tried not to let her trembling fingers press against his face, as badly as she wanted to grab at him. This seemed to startle him; as she got him turned, he flinched, several seconds too late, and mumbled again.

That was good, right? A reaction was probably good. If she could just get his attention, he’d snap out of it, maybe. The light of his eye gently touched her thumb, illuminating down to her wrist in the dimming sunset. But he was still looking past her, off into some unknowable void.

“Oh, Blue…” She grimaced as her eyes pricked and watered. She drew her hand around behind his head and pulled him a little closer, pressing herself against him, and tried the last thing she could think of. Maybe with a kiss, he would recognize her, and maybe he would recognize her hair band tied around his wrist, or his address on another thin band under his glove.

But as she pressed her mouth against his, as her breath cast fog against his eyeglass, Blumiere did not relax. He tensed. When Timpani drew back, the cold weight of dismay pressed against her shoulders and her heart.

There was finally an expression pulling at his brow, at the corner of his mouth. But it wasn’t recognition or fondness. It was fear.

Timpani staggered back, against the stone behind her. _What? That didn’t… work? Where was Blumiere, in there? Where was her Blue?_

Defeated, Timpani choked back a sob and grit her teeth. She found the strength to dig through her bag and find her phone, and to call Georgie, and to sit against the hard cold stone and wait with Blumiere, keeping a dull hand closed around his fingers to keep him from drifting away.

“ _Unhand Count Bleck_ ,” Blumiere hissed.

“I know, Blue,” Timpani sighed. She tugged at his hand. “Just a little while longer. Sit down.”

To her surprise, he actually did, although he continued to protest the physical contact every now and then.

Georgie found them after only a little game of describing her surroundings. Timpani hoped that someday, she and Blue could become as familiar with the woods. But tonight she just wanted to go home. The best that her friend could give her was a sympathetic knot in her brows, and some gentle reassurances, and a quiet walk straight back to their house. They did their best to ignore Blumiere’s eerie protests.

As Timpani pushed open their front door in the dark of the late evening, leading into a darker front room, Georgie took a quick breath. Timpani paused, Blumiere trailing behind her, tethered by her grip.

“Let me know how you’re doing in the morning, alright? Both of you.” Georgie leveled her gaze at Timpani. “Stay off your feet. Those sandals didn’t do you any good.”

“From now on I’ll just wear sneakers everywhere,” Timpani half-heartedly vowed. She moved her right arm to put her hand on her chest, but realized her arm wasn’t there. She stared down dumbly.

Georgie put her hand on the door frame, blocking off Timpani. “Are you sure you’ve got this? Are you good to go for tonight?”

Timpani huffed. “Yes. Good night, Georgie. Thank you for your help.”

Georgie saluted, and turned toward the path. “You owe me!” she called, as she walked off.

“We’ll come take a look at your toaster tomorrow!” Timpani called back. She pulled Blumiere into the house after her. When he didn’t complain, she paused, and turned back toward him.

His face showed no emotion, but he was looking at her.

“Don’t do this,” Timpani groaned. Her stomach gnawed at her insides, so she tugged him into the kitchen and set about making herself something quick and small. Her hand was still shaking, so she thumped her fist against the counter a few times to try to chase the weakness away. She felt Blumiere’s eye silently boring into her back and shuddered.

She spun to face him. “Do you want something? Don’t look at me like that,” she warned.

Her husband simply hovered above the tile, spectral and silent and motionless. Emotionless.

She couldn’t meet his stare for long. She examined the tile at her feet. But it would do no good; she had seen the miserable exhaustion splashed across his face, just the same as hers.

While her gaze wandered from the floor to the table, the scraps of paper littered across its surface caught her eye. Blumiere’s looped, curly handwriting was scrawled along a few notes in lopsided cursive. She shuffled over to the table and stared down at the cards and torn pages.

 _Timpani_ , read one card, just her name alone. Then, the one just overlapping: _Is that a sandwich?_

Timpani blinked, drawing her brows together. She brushed the paper away to see what was under it.

_Put what you want on the counter. Tell me what to do._

She stepped around the table to get a better angle at the next note.

 _That drink you enjoy is in the_ \- she couldn’t help but sniffle; he had simply given up on ‘refrigerator’. _On the top shelf. I made it this morning._

She stared at Blumiere. He was again staring at nothing, his arms hanging at his sides.

“Well, okay,” she sighed. She took a rattled breath, shrugged her shoulders, straightened her back. Opened the fridge and put her dressings on the counter. “Um… Can you hear me?”

He didn’t respond. She tried again, “Please put the sandwich together. I’ll get your lemonade.”

And, inexplicably, he moved. Timpani gave him a wide berth as he stood at the counter and clumsily stacked her dinner, one piece at a time. It occurred to her too late that she might have been able to tell him to take his gloves off, first.

Once their food and drinks were finished, she gently pushed the notes on the table aside and set everything on the table. One stained note was waiting at the bottom of the loose pile.

_I will need to be told to eat._

Right. Timpani beckoned him over to the table and blinked owlishly as he silently followed her orders. “Creepy” was perhaps the best word for it, but, she couldn’t help but feel a little relief. Even the familiar sour-sweet prickle of her drink had a strange off-ness to it, not in the flavor, but in the sensation of drinking it.

She again eyed the notes he had left for her. Thumbing over the warped paper, she could barely make out the lightest impression of today’s date. From the faded pencil, and the light water damage, it was easy to tell these had been written some time ago.

 _How_ long ago, she probably would never find out. His memory tended to come and go in fits and bursts. But the last time he had seemed to know exactly what to do about these “episodes” was over four months ago. She could only guess where he had squirreled away these directions, how he had remembered to set them out on the right day.

Their dinner was silent, and awkward, but Timpani was glad for a little relief before bed. She leveled her tired gaze at Blumiere, sitting motionless in the other chair, and then shook her head. It would have to wait until tomorrow. She picked him up off the chair and pushed him through the air to their bed, said “It’s time to sleep,” and nearly collapsed onto their blanket, her shoes still on her feet.

-

Timpani pulled a recipe out of their little box in the cabinet. It wasn’t that she didn’t know how to make bread how the Bakers did, back at home, but sometimes having the directions in front of her could be comforting, could let her mind wander a little more. The oven here was different, anyhow- electric, sleek, futuristic. It held the heat differently. But at least the recipe brought their cooking to mind. It was difficult to do everything one-handed, so for now, she just set the temperature. At least the oven would be ready when she was.

Blumiere stirred in their room, down the hall. Timpani eyed the buttons and dials on the oven with distaste. She still never expected the beeping. She shuffled over to the kitchen table in her slippers and eased herself into a chair, her sore legs and feet nearly creaking with the effort. She pushed away her plate, left on the table from last night, and leaned on her elbow as she watched the temperature display on the oven rise. When she realized she did not bring a drink to the table, she tapped her fingers against the surface one at a time, and let the corner of her mouth pull to the side as she weighed the costs and benefits of getting up.

Fortunately, her husband appeared at the end of the hallway, leaning against the wall, still wearing yesterday’s rumpled clothes. He had forgotten to put on his monocle, but he hardly had his eyes open anyway. He ran a gloved hand through his frazzled hair and let his fingers rest against a horn, for a moment, before he sighed. Her right elbow tingled as light poured out in the shape of her arm, and faded, leaving behind flesh and skin that shimmered faintly, when she moved. But the process was much slower than usual.

Oh, no wonder he was groggy. He hadn’t taken his medications last night. Blumiere absently placed a glass of water in front of Timpani as he made a little lap around the kitchen and came to rest in front of the stove. To a casual observer, he might have seemed focused and deliberate as he checked the calendar next to the window, and picked out a pan hanging off to the side, but Timpani could see his ears were pulled back flat against his head as she sipped her water.

Well, now she could make her dough more conveniently. Timpani downed the rest of her drink and hobbled over to the counter. Blumiere was attempting to make an omelet, but it seemed he had forgotten to turn the stove burner on.

It was less that she needed to fuss over the dough and more that she wanted to be doing something with her hands. It could wait. She twiddled her thumbs instead. At her approach, Blumiere’s ear twisted her way and then returned to its position in a quick, small motion. She regarded him, for a moment. He didn’t seem to notice she was hardly doing anything, next to him.

“Good morning,” she offered.

Blumiere turned his head in her direction, briefly, but didn’t respond. He probably couldn’t see her; he was keeping his dim eye closed for the most part, while his attention was on his hands.

She waited a moment, but he seemed very occupied with the inactive stove. “I told Georgie we’d take a look at her toaster today, when you’re feeling up to it.”

“… When _you’re_ feeling up to it,” Blumiere muttered, digging at the yolk with a spatula.

Timpani leaned against the counter, to ease the weight off her feet. He had a point. “Did you use any butter with that?”

“Yes.”

As his ears continued to droop, Timpani resisted the urge to reach out and rub the tip between her fingers. _That_ was bound to derail his train of thought. He would need to spit out whatever it was, before she could safely distract him.

She frowned at the smell of cooking egg. But there it was, yolk bubbling in the pan, without any of the burners on. Enough was enough.

So she hit him with a Tattle. Blumiere reeled back at the wash of magic and glared at her.

_That’s Blumiere Flores, my husband. He’s having some trouble saying something difficult. Max HP: 150, max FP: 450. Health is fine today. Blue is anxious about last night, specifically about my own reaction. And… he probably would have preferred if I didn’t invade his privacy to get that information._

Timpani huffed and squared her shoulders. Blumiere watched her, guarded, though he had to turn his head to catch her with his good eye. She took a moment to collect her thoughts; Blue was, unfortunately, still clammed up.

First, she gently put her hand on his and guided the pan to the cold stove. He probably didn’t want to burn right through his glove. She interlaced her fingers with his, and he looked away. “You don’t need to apologize,” she murmured.

“I-it isn’t…” He trailed off and pulled his hand away.

“I guess I was just taking it all for granted,” she said. “I just… assumed love would overpower anything between us. That was always the answer, before, wasn’t it?”

Blumiere winced. Then, he put the heel of his hand against his head, and his breath hitched. Timpani instantly regretted that- it was hard to judge how he’d react to references to events he barely remembered, even on a good day. For too long, she hesitated, trying to gauge where his emotions would go. She reached past him to turn on the burner, to avoid the look he gave her, eyes narrowed behind his arm.

“B-but, this, this curse, or whatever it is…”

“That isn’t the problem,” Blumiere finally sighed, letting his hand drop back to the countertop. He contemplated his fingers as he drummed the counter. “Or, um, I hope it isn’t. C-Count Bleck knows not… doesn’t… he doesn’t know what’s going on.” His ears fell all the way back against his shoulders.

Timpani moved her attention to the eggs. She bit her lip. It really would have been better to ask him what all this was, and maybe believed him, before he became buried in it again.

“It’s quite peculiar,” he was saying. “I, I see, you know… Other couples. And they do all the things you do, the normal things. And Count Bleck wants to do them too. But he also… can’t make himself want them…” He paused again, and a series of conflicted emotions took turns warring on his face.

But now he was talking, and Timpani didn’t think he would be able to stop. “I don’t know, for sure, of course, but I can’t recall ever being different than this. I don’t _want_ to be, but I become so afraid, when you start wanting that affection, and I just can’t figure out what to do with myself. I never enjoy it as much as I know I should… And, last evening, Count Bleck didn’t know who you w-were, where he was. If I d-don’t even like when my _wife_ kisses me, i-imagine my fright at a total st-stranger!” He gripped the countertop, and Timpani caught the tips of his other fangs as his mouth drew back. “Count Bleck doesn’t…” He deflated at last. “He doesn’t know what to do.”

Timpani’s heart grew heavy at his tortured grimace.

“He doesn’t know wh-why he doesn’t recognize you… I wish I could…”

But she was stuck about half a minute behind Blue. “Wait… you’ve been uncomfortable this whole time?”

He _remembered_ last night?

Timpani leaned farther into Blumiere’s field of view. “Why didn’t you tell me, Blue?”

He stared dully at the pan in front of him and halfheartedly gave it a nudge. “I didn’t _want_ to be uncomfortable.”

“You can’t just… you can’t ignore it and hope it’ll go away!”

Blumiere gave her a lazy, sidelong glance. “Yes, I can.”

Timpani stopped. She thought about responding, but stopped again when she saw the tears that he was struggling to hold back.

His voice cracked. “I love you, Timpani, dearly. I love you more than anything. I will always love you. The… The bells, and the light, they couldn’t have happened if I didn’t love you. Right…?”

She wasn’t sure how to respond. There was no way of telling how much he remembered. Blumiere shook his head, his fingers briefly grasped for a hat that wasn’t on his head.

“I don’t know what was before the light, but I know I loved you then, too. Count Bleck doesn’t know why he’s like this… I… I do enjoy. When you want to kiss, and hold, sometimes. J-just… not always. And I can’t ever find interest in those times when you want to do… more.”

Timpani opened her mouth, at that- had he been playing dumb on purpose? - but Blumiere continued.

“And it tears Count Bleck up, to know that you are feeling something I can’t, and something I can’t give back to you… And it is th-that physical affection, that I can’t… But, the light was true, so I don’t know…”

Timpani leaned against the counter and watched him. She considered telling him the eggs were burning, to redirect his emotions elsewhere, anywhere. The silent tears were nearly too much to bear. But they had been living here for seven months, and this was the first… _the first_ … time he had ever said anything about this. And, considering how quiet he had gotten after the first time she refused to hear about Nas… about the others, she knew that if she changed the subject now, he might not ever bring it up again.

Blumiere reached over the pan and turned his hand, and the burner’s dial twisted until the heat was off. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath in, and out. Again, something he already knew. She folded one hand over the other, on the counter, and spoke slowly. “I didn’t know you didn’t like it.” She sniffed. “You’re a good actor, I guess. I thought you just didn’t know… so, when you’d change the subject, I thought it was something…” She waved her hand. “Quirky, you were doing.”

She was met with sharp, glowing red eyes. She quickly corrected, “there’s a _lot_ about you that I don’t know, I’m realizing now. Sometimes it’s easy to forget how long we spent apart, how much time you and I had, to change…”

The glare turned to quiet confusion. Timpani shook her head once. It didn’t matter. “You need to tell me when you’re unhappy, Blue. So I can, you know… do something about it?”

Blumiere’s ear twisted toward her, and he met her eyes seriously. “You don’t like to hear about it. I remember… I think…” His eyes squinted shut again.

“Blue…” Timpani reached out toward his jaw, but thought better of it. “I love you too. You know that. Maybe…” She drew her hand toward her chest instead. “I haven’t been the best partner, for listening. I’m glad you have Maurice. And Myriel, and Charlie. You’ve been doing so much better, even when I haven’t been… helpful.”

Blumiere didn’t move, but his ear was still turned toward her, so she continued. “You know I want you to be happy, more than I want to make out with you,” she smiled, wistfully, for a moment. “I’ll be fine. I’ll be fine with whatever you’re comfortable with. Just… tell me when it’s too much, Blue.”

Blue considered her words, for a moment, while he poked miserably at the eggs. Regrettably, he had tried to cook and feel something at the same time, and now the omelet was very plain and perhaps overdone. At least the bread would turn out fine. Timpani hadn’t even put anything in the oven yet. He took a deep, slow, rattled breath. It would probably be pointless, to try to stop crying.

Her hand crept into the limit of his vision, on his good side. He let her take his hand and loosely curl her fingers between his. It had already been such a long day, and both of them had just gotten up… He rested his head against hers. Her hair was tangled, but still less unkempt than his, and it wasn’t the most comfortable headrest, but he found comfort in the sensation anyhow, the closeness, the quiet.

Time was becoming loose, and lost in the deep fog that cut him off from the past. His mental stamina was already wearing out. Perhaps breakfast would do both of them some good. Perhaps he might not be able to handle seeing neighbors today. Perhaps both. As he grasped for the identities of their neighbors they fell away and melted behind the vague fuzziness clouding his awareness.

But he knew Timpani was there, he could feel her against his cheek and his ear, and her hair just tickled at the base of his horn. And he remembered Timpani. So he closed his eyes for a few minutes, and they stood together for a little longer.


	3. found

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> timpani thinks things are much worse than they actually are.

“You should go in and rest, Blue.”

No response.

Timpani eyed her husband under the shade of her sun hat. She stood up straight, stretched her back, and rubbed her gardening gloves together to dislodge some of the fresh soil. Blue was squinting, even under his own wide-brimmed floppy hat, and he had given up on weeding by hand and was yanking plants out of the ground with a small, repetitive plucking motion. The weeds glowed with his blue-red aura as their roots tore free of the soil. But what really concerned her was that faraway look in his eye, the dark ring underneath.

“Blue.”

The daylight dimmed as a thick, fluffy cloud rolled in front of the sun. Timpani put a hand to her hat as the breeze nearly picked it up. Blue didn’t react in time, and he blinked in confusion as it tipped off his head, as if waking from a dream.

He scooped it off the ground, brushed it twice, and put it back on.

“ _Blue_ ,” Timpani insisted.

Blue startled and turned his attention to her. “Yes?”

She pointed at the house. “Go in and rest. You’re hardly awake.”

He considered her words for a moment, putting a dirty gardening glove to his chin and leaving a little residue of soil on his face.

Timpani motioned for him to continue.

“I’m alright,” he mumbled eventually, failing to suppress a yawn.

So she walked over and nudged him with her leg, only to realize he wasn’t even floating at ground-level when he nearly tipped over. He caught himself on an unsteady hand in the soft soil and gave her an exaggeratedly betrayed scowl.

“Don’t make me pick you up and move you,” Timpani warned, putting her hands on her hips.

Blue narrowed his eye at her, as if daring her. When Timpani moved to step forward, he scrambled upright and hopped off the ground. “B-but the garden…” He glanced around at the unfinished weeding job, at the little row of potted plants.

The breeze picked up, and both of them grabbed at their hats. Timpani rolled her eyes. “I can do it myself, you know, if I need to. The help’s appreciated, but…” She looked out over the field, at the little town down the road. “You have _not_ been sleeping enough lately, dear. You’re getting unfocused. Take a nap.”

His eye twitched and he glanced off to the side, his brows drawing together. “I would prefer not to.”

“Why not?”

Blue drew back his fangs in an aggravated little snarl. “Bad dreams.”

“… And?”

He sagged in the air. “I have been remembering… things…” Unsure of what to do with his hands, he shuffled back and forth. He hesitated before grabbing the brim of his floral-printed hat and pulling it down, just slightly, the loose fabric not quite hiding the discomfort in his expression. “The dreams, the resting. They make it worse.”

Timpani rubbed her fingers against her thumb, feeling each little clump of dirt between the fabric of the glove. The autumn was warm, as it was last year and the year before, but the breeze brought with it just enough chill to cool the sweat off her head with a bite. She took in the soft, full smell of the garden, of the torn weeds.

“You’re going to have to remember it, sooner or later,” she began, slowly. “Maurice said it would be hard.”

Blue’s ears drooped.

“But… You know, I’ll be here every step of the way…”

He sighed and turned toward the door. “I can’t talk about it.”

She hesitated. She held back a wince at the way Blue’s ear flicked at the pause. “Do you want to talk about the dreams instead?”

Blue shook his head without turning to face her. “You know dreams are hard to explain.”

Timpani followed him to the door. He left it open for her, so she stepped inside and kicked it shut behind her. “You’ve been showing up in _mine_ a lot…”

“Sorry.” He drifted through their front room into the kitchen, and busied himself with their cluttered checklist next to the calendar.

“No,” Timpani started. “That’s not what I meant. I mean- if you can get into mine, and see what I’m thinking about… Can it work the other way?”

Blue finally turned to stare at her. “What?”

“If you can’t describe them, can you show them to me instead?” Timpani pulled off her gloves and tossed them to the kitchen table. She tugged his hat over his horns and off his head, and soon hers joined his on the little pile.

Blue tugged at his gloves. “I’m not sure it works that way.” To avoid Timpani’s thoughtful stare, he looked down and fussed over his skirt, where his tail and a fin were just peeking through a torn seam. He pinched the fabric together and it stayed closed.

“Why not?”

Blue squinted at the calendar, and then he finally gave up and turned to her, his ears pulled back in exasperation. “It is a much simpler matter to leave your own mind and travel to someone else’s than to pull someone else in. Living creatures prefer not to have their space invaded like that, down to their instincts.”

Timpani tilted her head. Facts had begun returning to him, a few months ago, when he had started doing really well sleep-wise. Oh, of course- of course the feelings would come next, the life experiences. Of course regaining his memory wouldn’t be fun anymore.

“It would be like sticking your head underwater and refusing to hold your breath,” Blue muttered.

She turned toward the sink to wash her hands, twirling her thin gold wedding ring to work the soap underneath, mostly to hide her smirk as she glanced sidelong at him. “I bet a great caster like you could figure it out. With your mastery of wizardly knowledge.”

He crossed his arms. “Are you… are you attempting to butter me up? I’m not in a good mood, you know.”

She stuck out her lower lip and drew her brows together as close as she could, and when Blue snorted she knew she’d won.

“Very well,” he growled. “If you insist.” But she could still see just the ghost of a smile in his eye.

“Let me put away the plants.” Timpani moved for the door. “We can finish the garden later.”

“N-now?” Blue tapped his fingers together and drifted backward a pace.

“You need a nap _now_ ,” she replied.

Blue spluttered a little more and scratched at his horn, but Timpani was not to be swayed. She didn’t give him a chance to respond before she was out the door.

It was pleasant enough outside, and Timpani didn’t mind taking her time. Midafternoon was definitely too early to be going to bed, but, an hour or two would perk him up. It wouldn’t _hurt_ , at least- when left unoccupied, his eye was getting dangerously unfocused, his expression a little too blank. It had been months since his last episode, and Timpani wasn’t about to sit through another one if she could avoid it. When she was satisfied with the cute little line the potted plants sat in along the side of the house, Timpani put her hands on her hips and nodded to herself. An idea was beginning to trickle together.

She found Blue already sitting in bed, eyes half-shut, the fluff on his head dripping wet. The sheets sat in his loosely curled claws, as if he had been thinking about pulling them over his chest and forgotten to finish.

“I thought you would argue a little more,” she teased, on her way to the bathroom. He simply leaned back against the bed frame with a long sigh.

It took her only a few minutes to wash up, and then she sidled next to Blue under the covers. “I was thinking about how we might get this to work.” She bumped her shoulder against his.

“I have no ideas…”

She grinned. “I could use my Tattle on you, while you’re dozing. Do you think?”

“Hmmm.”

“How do you normally get into my dreams?” She started arranging pillows around Blue.

He yawned again. “I think… It’s a spell I cast.”

Timpani put her hand on his chest and pushed him down. He frowned at her, but didn’t fight. “Will your eyes light up? Anything fancy like that?”

“How is Count Bleck supposed to know?”

She paused. “… Yes, that was probably a silly question.”

He turned away from her and rolled to his side, nearly buried in her little nest of pillows. “Whatever you want to do,” he mumbled.

Timpani laid down next to him and leaned her head against the rough fur on back of his neck. “Give me a tour of your mind palace,” she whispered.

That startled a laugh out of him. He didn’t respond, and his breathing evened out after a few seconds, but she knew he was still smiling.

She waited a bit, just watching his side rise and fall, and after a minute his breathing slowed. She closed her eyes. Then, she reached over and put her hand on his head, for good measure, and let her magic flow out of her and wash over him.

Timpani stood in a meadow. She glanced around. This was… Oh.

This was where they used to meet, on their home world, before the crack of dawn.

“Blue?” she called. But there was no response- no breeze, no birds calling, no motion. So she walked forward, her bare feet simply passing through the blades of grass as if they were air. The trees were more solid, she discovered, when she put her hand against the bark. The texture was a faraway sensation, and it seemed to flow back and forth under her hand, like the shadows cast by a fire. Timpani continued past it, marching through the woods without regard for what appeared to be underfoot.

But the woods slowly twisted, and faded, and became unfamiliar and dark. The trees bent out of shape, with too many branches reaching toward the sky and disappearing into clouds of gray leaves. And then… a sudden clearing. A wide, flat pool stretched out before her. She crept to the edge of the water and peered at the perfectly mirrored reflection.

Blue peered right back at her, his old cape around his shoulders and his hat hiding his horns. She waved at him and his image perfectly copied her. Something was off, though. Timpani reached up slowly to where the hat should have been, only to find nothing. But Blue’s hand bumped against it, and his eye widened.

Lightning flashed behind him, and she realized the Void was stretched out across the sky, draining the color from the trees. She glanced behind her, but only saw the same gray, hazy clouds, as if it was going to rain soon. When she turned back to her reflection, she saw Blue had turned to match her. But then, unbidden, he rolled his eye and opened his mouth, to say something she couldn’t hear. He held out a white-gloved hand. And so, she took a breath and stepped into the water, and dropped straight through the surface.

Everything was black, like a sea of ink. She felt something catch her in the darkness, something huge and clawed, but it held her gently. Its midnight fingers were illuminated by her own faint light.

“My apologies,” Blue’s voice echoed around her. “It seems I don’t get to pick the metaphors.”

Timpani laughed, a little breathlessly, keeping an eye on the claws caging her. “Are all of your dreams this on the nose?”

“Stars above, I hope not.”

His hands opened, the fingers fading away into the dark, and Timpani flapped her wings and bumbled out into the darkness, letting the light of her antennae guide the way.

Then, she realized she was hovering within a stone building, near a shattered window. She beat her tiny wings and swooped through the opening in the broken glass. The city stretched out in front of her, every building carved out of the stone of a vast wall leading up and out of sight. Looking out from the buildings, there was a similar city built into the far wall, across a great ravine. She touched down on the roof of the next building down and stumbled on her hands and knees. Her short hair fell across her face and blocked her vision for a moment, and she tucked the loose strands behind her ear.

Timpani shuddered. Could she be a Pixl at will? Or would it simply happen any time she got distracted? At least it wasn’t affecting her vision. But where was Blue?

She paced around on the flat rooftop. Maybe it would be better, here, to fly. She fluttered off the rooftop and cast her eye around the paths and buildings below. There wasn’t really much to do except glide forward and hope she could spot him somewhere along the path, or the roofs.

From this angle, it was easier to see farther down into the ravine. There was a red light, far below, cast up across the bottoms of the beige buildings in a rather threatening stripe.

What was this world?

Then, she spotted him, drifting along one of the paths. She tilted her wings and dipped her trajectory to catch up with him, but then she stopped cold.

There was a white mechanical creature on the road ahead. It seemed to have legs that faded in and out of existence, and its image was jittery and rippling, as if obscured by static. Blue was stumbling right toward it, unsteady- she could see the way he wobbled in the air, and he had a hand against the wall of the building next to him to support his weight.

“Blue!” she called. She again tried to catch up, but the faster she flew, the farther away he seemed to get. The machine crawled long the wall in erratic skips and starts. Blue sank to the ground, slowing to a crawl.

… _Oh. Of course._ It was like so many of her Bitland dreams, where she was running and running as fast as she could, but her limbs were heavy, and she could only wade through mental molasses as her own monster sprinted after her.

Since she couldn’t reach him, she dove down among the buildings and stopped on another roof. Maybe he could still hear her. “Where are we?” she cried. “What is this place?”

A hollow voice cut through static. “ _The Tribe of Artificers welcomes you to Douma. By their sacrifice, we progress forward._ ”

Timpani whirled around. There was a camera on the far corner of the building. As soon as she narrowed her eyes in confusion, the camera winked out of existence. Two more appeared along the buildings around her.

“Douma?” She trotted over to the balcony and tried to keep a lookout for that white machine. The cameras melted away and re-appeared, speckled across the buildings between her and Blue.

One of them fixed its cold, blank gaze on her. “ _A barren world. There is nothing here for you._ ” It disintegrated.

Far away, along the path, Blue shuddered and collapsed. He was bleeding, but the machine was nowhere to be found. Timpani vaulted over the balcony and ran toward him, but there always seemed to be more buildings to climb over, more rocks between her and Blue, and every time he fell out of view she would only find him even more distant the next time she spotted him. The cameras scattered around the walls and outcroppings like endless static.

She was out of energy. Timpani stopped to gasp for air, resting her hands against her knees. “How did he get here?”

“ _He fell._ ”

“Why is he alone?” Timpani tried one last time to heave herself over a boulder and get to him. “Where are his friends?”

The world shuddered and jumped to the side under Timpani with an ear-piercing wail, and she landed hard on her elbow. Was that a bad question? She didn’t understand. The sky was dripping in black globs, and it seemed that reality itself was screaming.

Timpani curled up and covered her head, trying to protect herself from the ink falling from the sky. “Blue! Stop!”

Everything froze. Timpani looked up at the sky and saw the blackness hovering in place. Then the dream shattered like broken glass into stark black and white. The boulders and stone under her side grew cold, and smooth like glass. She stumbled to her feet and glanced around at this angular, more geometric version of the city.

It was too slippery to walk, so Timpani took to the air. The only light was cast by her antennae, and her wings, but the dark surfaces swallowed it up without leaving behind any shadows. But even the distilled blackness could not swallow her own color. She rose above the silent city and tried to look for Blue again, but he was gone.

There was something perfectly red on the ground. Timpani lowered herself for a better look.

Blood was splashed against the wall where he had been. There were some handprints left behind, and then droplets scattered across the ground in an unsteady line down the path. There was no other movement or sound to the city. What else could she do but follow?

She reached what seemed to be the outskirts of the city, because the landscape evened out and faded to white, drowning out the trail of blood. From here, she could land, and walk, her sandals casting swirls in the blank whiteness as if it was mist.

It seemed to go on forever. She could catch faint impressions of landmarks, here and there- a cliff jutting out overhead, the bristles of a pine tree to the side, rocks she scuffed her shoes on along the path- the harsh call of a bird- but there was no way to know if she had become turned around or not.

She rubbed her arms. “Is this a normal nightmare for you? Or is this something I’m causing?”

The mist scattered, but did not thin.

She frowned. “It’s like this even with your medication?”

At that, the mist abruptly dropped from the sky and fell into the ground, filling her surroundings with color and detail. And, in the distance, she could see a tent and campfire under the shelter of a rocky outcropping.

“Is that for me?” Timpani headed straight for the campsite. But her surroundings provided no answer to her question. She took a moment to orient herself in this more stable area, slowing her pace to a comfortable amble. The sun shone against trees and stones that did not wobble or change, except for slight differences when she looked away. The temperature was pleasant; though there was no wind, fluffy clouds cast cool shadows across the land between her and the campsite ahead. Her feet felt solid enough against the ground, and looking at her hands, her dark skin did not shimmer or give off any light. Nice and human. Her brows drew together as she did a double take. She was wearing her gardening gloves.

Perhaps she would be taking a look at some plants. It would make sense, for his dreams to reflect their activity today.

As she drew nearer to the campsite, she saw a hulking figure pop into view, sitting next to the tent, hunched over. She came to a stop with a hard scuffle against the dirt path.

_Oh, no. No, no, no._

These were supposed to be _dreams_. Abstract emotions, maybe some visuals. She could hold his hand and be there. She could help him with his _fear_.

These were not supposed to be memories. Not good memories.

Timpani took a deep breath, and clenched her fingers against her palms under her gloves. Slowly, deliberately, she opened her fingers one by one, blowing air out past her teeth in a long hiss.

She remembered this guy, from the illustrations in the Light Prognosticus. The brutish thug- all brawn, no brain. But she had only just come in. It was too early to simply leave, and it would doubtless hurt Blue’s feelings if she ducked out now. So, she trudged forward down the dirt path.

He looked up at her approach, but didn’t move, other than to show his hand in a meek little wave. Instead of responding, Timpani simply walked up to the campfire and stood across from him. She folded her arms and stared him down. He watched her with his one working eye, for a moment, before messing around with the fire. It looked like he was carving something, or working with his hands, but there was nothing in his grip, or in front of him, except the fire.

“’Ello,” the warrior greeted, the firelight shining off his sweaty bald head and his worn, wiry beard and casting deep sunset shadows behind him.

“Hi.” Timpani glanced around at the mountainside, at the trees, in broad daylight.

He stretched out the disconnected rings of his arm and held out a meaty hand. “Name’s O’Conroy,” he offered. With his arm out of the way, she could see what looked like a dog’s face printed on his shirt.

Timpani squinted. “O’Chunks.”

“What?”

Timpani nodded, once. “Your name is O’Chunks.”

O’Chunks blinked several times, as if the firelight was starting to hurt his eye. “Tha’s right, innit…” He tugged at his beard. Then, he jerked upright. “Wait. ‘E remembered Douma but not me name? Th’lad’s gettin’ everything out’teh order…”

“Did you forget your own name?”

O’Chunks turned back to her, like he suddenly remembered she was there. “Huh?”

Timpani slid her face into her rough gloves and scrubbed at her forehead. “Why are you here, O’Chunks?”

“Why is anyone anywhere?” he shot back. Timpani flinched, and opened her fingers to get a better look at him. O’Chunks seemed to realize his slip-up and immediately moved his focus back to the fire. “Ehh, uh. ‘Twas here t’check on yeh.”

“To check on me,” Timpani repeated, voice flat.

“I mean, yeh know…” He tapped his fingers together and folded his hands. Timpani wondered if Blue had originally picked that gesture up from the man, or if he simply didn’t notice he was doing it now. “Are yeh… certain yeh want t’keep goin’? Yeh can go back.” He glanced back up her way, eyes wide.

Timpani shifted her weight. “I’m not scared.”

“I know _tha’_ , Count, but tha’ dinnae mean yeh hafta put yerself through it.” O’Chunks shrugged.

“Timpani,” she cut in.

He gave her a sympathetic look, and Timpani bristled. “These’re stormy waters yer sailin’, lass. Stay on yer toes.”

“Yes, yes, I’ll be careful.” Timpani turned away from the fire and continued down the path, rolling her eyes. She tugged at her gardening gloves.

“One more thing,” O’Chunks called after her.

Timpani stopped and waited. But he didn’t continue. “Yes, Blue?”

“Um… I forgot.”

She shook her head and walked away. A few moments later, when she thought to glance behind again, the campsite was gone.

Nowhere to go but forward. If Blue had lost himself already, then she would go and find him. Perhaps a smarter member of the team would be a little more self-aware.

Ahead of her lie a mire covered in thick, lime green foliage. She wrinkled her nose; the acrid stench must have been overpowering, at the time, if it was this strong even in dreams. The peat dripped upward in wobbling, shimmering globs, and disappeared into the leaves of the short, impenetrable tree cover. The path fell away into the lime green grass and moss. She put her foot into the overgrowth experimentally, only to find it was soft and fine, like a blanket.

Well, that wasn’t so bad. It was almost easy to forget about the odor, after a few moments. She trudged forward into the mire, stepping gingerly in case any unexpected pitfalls were waiting to swallow her boot.

It should have been dark, within the shadows of the melty trees, but Timpani hardly noticed any change in the light. Just as well. It would have been spooky, if she had to wander in blind. Even her own rainbow light was being swallowed in the endless sea of green.

She couldn’t shake the feeling she was being watched.

Timpani eyed the solid cover of the trees overhead, but anything could have been hiding within the endlessly intricate detail of the leaves, of the ripples cast across the entire cover with every drop of peat that rose into the surface. It was easy to get lost in the detail, actually. There was so much shifting and changing, and her limbs were growing heavy and weak anyway, and the smell ever more oppressive…

Her knees sat against the soft, blankety ground. When had she fallen? The smell was punching her senses over and over, lancing sharp pains through her sinuses with every breath. Timpani gasped for air, but that only tore up her lungs faster. She wouldn’t be able to hold out much longer.

Then, something hard and thorny punched into her back, knocking her to the ground. Timpani screamed and slapped at her shoulders, but the thing was clinging to her, digging little claws up into her hair. She finally got her hands around it and threw it off. Timpani panted and swiped the sweat away from her brow, trying to bring whatever the thing had been into focus.

A girl crouched in front of her, blank black eyes far too close to Timpani’s face for comfort. She shrieked and catapulted backward, scrambling back against the blanketed ground, but the girl remained motionless, her green skin blending into the mire perfectly. A bright pink dress with jagged frills along every seam gave the only hint that she had a body at all. _Oh. This must be Mimi._

Timpani clambered to her feet, and Mimi watched her rise. She was finding it hard to judge the girl’s expression- the dead eyes were quite distracting. Finally, Mimi tilted her head and hummed. When she stepped forward, Timpani couldn’t help but step back.

Mimi smirked, sharp little teeth just showing behind her curled lip. “Golly, aren’t you on edge! I’ve been looking for you.”

Timpani shook her head and stepped past Mimi, back out into the jungle, the poison forgotten. “I don’t have time for you, Mimi. I’m looking for _Blue_.”

“That’s gonna be tricky!” Mimi bounced along after her. “But, hey, I’ve got a better idea. I wanted you to take a lookie at something I found.”

“What is it,” Timpani grunted. The little monster was always wasting time, misdirecting, obstructing.

And she _was_ nothing more than a monster, under her rather foul attempt at looking like a young teenager, Timpani reminded herself.

Mimi paused. When Timpani glanced back at her, she blinked several times. Mimi suddenly looked much younger... and drippier.

“I’m… not sure anymore.” Mimi put a thoughtful hand to her mouth. But she perked up after a few seconds. “Oh! But! Can I see your hat?” She smiled sweetly, like sour honey.

“Well!” Timpani grinned. “With a smile like that, how could I not humor you?” She reached up with a flourish and pulled her sun hat off, and presented it to the child.

Mimi made grabbing hands at the hat, and Timpani pulled it out of her reach a few times, before Mimi’s arms stretched out to snatch it away. Mimi chuckled as she put it on, and while her attention was on the hat, Timpani got the feeling the girl was still watching her. “Thanks, Count Dad. This is a little more stylish than you usually like!”

Timpani stopped and scowled. “No, I’m Timpani,” she corrected.

“Whatever you say, County.”

Timpani stomped her foot. “I’m not him!”

Mimi started walking away, where the trees began thinning out. “Alright, Tea Dad.”

Gritting her teeth, Timpani trudged after Mimi out of the mire.

“I remembered what I wanted to do! I wanna play a prank on Dimentio,” Mimi announced. She prattled on about the details of her plan, but Timpani stopped and looked up at the building looming over them.

 _Marvelous Mergath’s House of Miracles_ , the sign outside the gates proclaimed.

“I don’t think…” Timpani frowned at the cameras, at the drones, at the barbed wire. “I don’t think we’ll find Dimentio here, Mimi.”

Mimi tugged at Timpani’s shawl and whined. “Nooo, Tea Dad, we gotta go through there!”

“Alright! Alright.” She set her glare on the front door and marched in, Mimi trailing behind, her gummy fingers still grasping at Timpani’s clothes.

The moment that Timpani stepped into the facility, though, she looked back and saw there was no longer a door behind her. And, with the heavy weight of cold dread pushing from her chest to her stomach, she saw the blank stare on Mimi’s face, now much older and nearly her height. The effect was mitigated somewhat by the big sun hat, frilled with a rainbow ribbon, flopped over her head. But the deception was no less apparent.

The lights overhead shut off, and it was pitch black for a moment, and then duller, redder emergency lights flooded the room from the floor. Mimi let go of Timpani’s shawl and stepped farther into the semi-darkness, the red light dulling her natural green into an eerie brown.

“Where have you taken me?” Timpani demanded, refusing to take another step. “What is the meaning of this?”

Mimi turned back to stare at her. “Chunky told me you wanted to keep going. Are you going to keep going, or not? It’s a little late to turn back, silly!”

Timpani paused. She could have sworn she saw something like sadness dash across the teen’s face, for just a second, but it was already gone.

Mimi held out a beckoning hand in a terribly familiar gesture. “There’s a barrier here. You have to fight through it.” She turned her head in an eye-rolling motion. “Obviously. Everything else is past here.”

“How can I trust you?” Timpani stepped backward. “How do I know you’re not leading me into a trap?”

Mimi continued to stare with a vacant little smile, her hand outstretched. “Golly, I know _I_ like to waste time, but you’re sure taking the cake here, aren’t ya?”

 _That’s your daughter_ , something deep in her mind echoed, and her heart ached. _She’ll lead you where you’re going_.

Timpani sighed, long and loud, and stepped forward after Mimi.

Mimi turned away to continue leading her. There were no walls or doors to this place; even as they continued to walk forward, all Timpani could see around them was the smooth polished floor and the high ceiling.

“You really don’t like looking at us.” Her tone had changed abruptly, matter-of-fact and dull. “You’re not even calling me Tourmaline.”

“You had a _nickname_ for her?” Timpani leaned forward, incredulous.

At that, Mimi flinched, a shudder passing down her hair and through her body like a ripple. The ripple crashed into the floor and shot out across the entire space, leaving a disc of featureless black marble in its wake. The red lights flickered and white, lightless flames spat out from the floor instead, casting their not-light across the two of them without leaving any shadows.

“Did you come all the way here just to be a meanie?” Mimi snarled.

Before Timpani could respond, shadowed creatures of all sorts came pouring through the lightless flames out of the darkness. Both of them sprang into action- Timpani ducking under Mimi as she grew, and grew, and flowed out of her dress, and more legs sprouted out of her neck. It would probably be a bad idea to cast a shock wave, with Mimi directly above her…

Mimi snapped out her clawed legs at the creatures as they approached, kicking them away back over the flames.

Timpani took her cue and shot lances of magic out individually at the creatures, clearing a path for Mimi to guide her through the crowd. It was easy, as if she knew exactly which way to go.

One sharp, shadowed creature dodged past Mimi’s legs and made a jump at Timpani. She punched at it with a quick jab, blowing it away with a glob of arcane energy that flared up past her elbow with every color of the rainbow.

Timpani watched where it landed, and realized there was a square of distant light, past the flames. “There! The door!”

Mimi unleashed a terrible shriek and showered the creatures with scattered, pointed red gems. That beat them back into the darkness. Timpani shot out from under her cover and sprinted for the door, and didn’t stop until she was through.

Well! Wasn’t that something. The sky out here was darker and cloudier, the wind was picking up. Scraggly trees clung to the ground, but it was hard to see too far, as a fog had settled along the ground. She reached up to secure her hat, and was disappointed to find she had left it with Mimi. Then, she realized Mimi was no longer with her, and the building behind was gone, replaced with thick fog.

A cold emptiness grew in Timpani’s gut, at that. They had been making such a good team. She already missed the child.

Best to move on, then. Timpani shook off her strange attachment to the creature.

Ahead, between the sparse trees, she could see Myriel waving. His wiry-muscled arm was casting swirls into the fog. She tugged at the round clasp on her shawl and marched his way. But before she could catch up, he stepped behind a tree and was gone.

“Hey!” his voice called from above. Timpani glanced upward and saw him sitting on a branch that was far too thin for him.

“Myriel!” she exclaimed. Finally, someone she _liked_. She hurried over to his tree, but when she looked up again, he was gone.

Timpani huffed. Were all of Blue’s dreams this starved of content? There was hardly anything here that even warranted her attention, let alone needed comfort. What was eating at him, that he so desperately wanted to avoid sleeping?

All at once she came up on a precipice. It stretched all the way out on either side into the fog. Sitting at the edge was a little orange dog, mostly fluff, with a huge curled tail resting against his back.

“Maurice,” she greeted as she approached. Maurice glanced at her, his giant glasses magnifying his beady little eyes, and he sat relaxed, with one paw folded over the other, just hanging off the edge of the cliff. Timpani peeked over the side.

The ocean lapped at the hard stone wall hundreds of feet below. She sat down, to keep her balance, and let her legs hang off the edge to match the dog’s.

“I said it would be hard, you know,” he said plainly. He returned his gaze to the distant smoky horizon.

“Tell that to Blue,” she grumbled.

The dog tilted his head and listened for a moment. Then his tongue lolled out to lick his nose. “Sometimes what’s more important than what you’re seeing is what you’re _not_ seeing,” he warned.

Timpani sighed. “Will you just tell me what it is?”

His beady eyes, wizened by the white fur around his brows and muzzle, met hers. “I can’t until you start listening.” He wagged his stiff, curled tail, and stuck his tongue out again. He nodded his head toward the abyss.

The cloudy mist pouring from the crashing waves clung to her boots, nearly obscuring the water’s surface, and the sharp rocks poking above that surface, far below. “I _am_ listening,” she growled.

The dog hummed in a sad little sigh. “I recommend that you do not simply jump off here.”

And then Timpani was alone at the cliff.

She stood, planting her feet more confidently at the edge. Her cloak billowed in the harsher wind and her hair flew around her face at every gust in a dark halo. Well, at least she didn’t _have_ to jump. She had Pixl wings, when she wanted them. And, with a thought, she was off the ground, struggling to keep her wispy-thin body stable in the air. She fluttered off the side and angled her wings to glide gently down the cliff side.

That was when the wind picked up and slammed into her thin, hollow wings, blasting her off-balance and sending her careening antennae-over-tail down toward the ocean.

Timpani screamed, but her voice was lost to the howling winds, and her sense of direction was lost to the endless gray mists and quick blurs of the cliff side speeding by with each turn.

All at once, the spinning stopped. Timpani hung suspended between the finger and thumb of a black glove. Then, she was lightly tossed to the side. She landed on her feet, but stumbled, and tripped over the hem of her cape and crashed to the ground. Over her stood Dimentio, the eyes of his mask narrow and cold. Timpani climbed to her elbows and took quick stock of her surroundings. They appeared to be in some kind of warehouse, with lines of labeled items stocked in rows upon rows of shelves, lit only by dim lanterns dangling from the dull ceiling. Their light cast uneven, hazy shadows, but it wasn’t hard to see even all the way to the farthest shelves against a blank wall.

Timpani glared at Dimentio, but the moment she opened her mouth to address him, he spoke over her, loud and high.

“You were to find me at the top of the cliff so I could guide you down. What are you doing here? Why are you so far down?” He flinched, and tried to hide his displeasure behind an empty smile. “What are you gaining from this?”

She bared her teeth at him. They seemed a little sharper than she remembered, as she spoke. “I’m looking for what’s wrong. I just want to help.”

Dimentio’s grin widened. “Well, you’re not looking very hard, are you? Like a…” His smile faltered, and he waved his hand. “Oh, you know.”

“I _am_ looking. I _am_ listening!” Timpani snarled. “Why won’t you tell me what’s wrong?”

The lights flickered, and black started oozing from the secured bases of the ceiling lights. Dimentio’s deranged smile returned. “You appear to be confounding each of my efforts to tell you, dear Count.”

Timpani clutched at her hair. “No! You’re doing that… that thing you always do, where you don’t talk about how you’re feeling. A-and I get it, it’s so hard to talk about feelings!”

The walls fractured, and black glass began creeping across the surface, replacing the plain drabness. Dimentio watched her.

“It takes so _long_ , and I never even manage to say the right thing that makes you feel better.” She felt so lightheaded. Dimentio swam in and out of her focus. “And then, being able to do nothing but _wait_ for memories to come back? And not even being able to control when things come back, or what even comes back? And no control over which order? Maddening!”

Timpani stopped and shut her eyes, and scrubbed at her face. When she opened them again, Dimentio slid into focus, a wide, frozen smile plastered on his face.

“Ahaha! Who is truly frustrated, here? Which one?” His expression remained and he simply stood, staring down at her. _Fear_ , a quiet instinct whispered, but Timpani disregarded it.

Instead, she pounded her white-gloved fists against the ground, rattling the storage room shelves and fracturing the very ground. Blackness spiderwebbed throughout the area the two of them sat in.

“What do you _mean_ , which one!? I’m _Timpani_. I am here to see what is troubling my husband, and help with whatever it may be. But I’m not finding anything! Nothing except sniveling clowns, and people I already know!”

Dimentio watched, but his eyes seemed off. Perhaps Timpani was already seeing red anyway. Black globs dripped from the ceiling in earnest, now, leaving puddles of black glass.

She had disarmed him, and now she could strike. “I hate you! Each of you- you- you all tried to kill everyone! Everyone that ever existed!”

His smile twitched, at the corner.

“You tried to end existence itself! How could you simply waltz along to the Dark Prognosticus’ tune?” Timpani rammed a clawed finger in Dimentio’s direction. “You didn’t _ever_ even try to talk Blue out of it!”

No, Dimentio’s eyes had definitely grown red.

 _Good_ , Timpani seethed. Maybe he might hear her now.

“He was suffering, and none of you ever did anything! You just did whatever that book told you without question. And now he’s _sick_ , and he’s dealing with all of these terrible problems! He never would have had to deal with all this, if things had just stayed good, and perfect!”

“Is that what this is about?” Dimentio’s mask had twisted into an expression Timpani had never seen before- surprise, she had encountered, of course. But he looked downright hurt. “You think this is _their_ fault?”

Suddenly, the room was freezing cold, and Timpani realized she was in only her pajamas. Her heart rattled in her chest and she scooted back from Dimentio, sweaty hands scrabbling for purchase against the featureless black glass.

Dimentio remained on his feet, but his body was slack, and the red glow to his eyes flared, casting a dull glow against Timpani’s feet. She curled them toward herself, away from him.

“I-I…” She sat up straighter. “Yes.”

But he didn’t seem to hear her. “Back when things were good? Back when they were perfect? You’re becoming terribly confused, dear Count.”

Then, everything fell away to a sea of ink.

“ _Have you forgotten what I lived with_?”

Then, Timpani was standing in their home, looking out the window of the bedroom. Birds chirped and fluttered about. Fluffy clouds rolled across the sun. The grass rippled gently with the breeze. A picturesque afternoon.

 _No_. Timpani squared her shoulders, clenched her fists until the stiff fabric of her gloves creaked under the strain. _He did not just kick me out. This must still be a dream_.

Something was off with her vision. Everything seemed smeared and fuzzy, against their regular clarity. It was giving her a terrible headache- after a few experimental blinks, she discovered it was one of her eyes causing the issue. With a dark kind of satisfaction, she squinted her eye closed and brought the room into a sharper relief. She wouldn’t be dissuaded.

Fear prickled at the back of her head, at her neck and shoulders. This was still a dream. Something was in the house. It would be harder to see it, one-eyed. But- whatever it was- she would face it. She swallowed her fear and buried it under her aggravation. Magic sparked at her fingertips in an effort to keep herself vigilant. What would she find here? Super Dimentio, perhaps? Or- her own friends, the heroes that became his undoing?

Timpani couldn’t get her breathing under control. Perhaps she was still too worked up after dealing with Dimentio. Or, she supposed, Blue’s idea of Dimentio. _What a needlessly cruel creature_ , she growled, to herself. Good riddance.

The doorway out into the hall seemed bigger than she remembered. She poked her head curiously around the frame and stared out into the dark hallway. It wasn’t dark- the lights weren’t on, but she could see fine, with her working eye. She leaned out and made her way down the passage. It stretched out farther and farther the longer she moved. She shivered and looked around at the walls, the ceiling. Her pulse pounded in her chest and up into her throat and ears.

A staticky sound, from down the hall. Her head jerked to the source of it. Of course, the television.

It was strange that it instilled such dread, in her own home.

She heard ragged breathing, and realized it was her own. She put a claw over her mouth, to steady herself. Deep breaths, quietly. But her pulse, and the ache from her shoulders up through her neck to her temples, remained. She twisted an ear forward, to try to get a better sense of what program was on, but the sound was indistinct and erratic. She would have to investigate.

Something in her heart screamed at the prospect of going into that room, but Timpani took a sharp breath in, shook out her arms, and inched around the doorway. The television was on, but it was set only to static, with short bursts of sound, strange and foreign, breaking through the white noise. Sitting on the couch, which had been turned to face away from the door… Timpani gasped and covered her mouth to quiet her breath.

Illuminated by the static light from the screen were two long, straight horns. Just poking out from the sides of the couch were the shoulder spikes. Timpani could easily imagine the thick, strong arms they were attached to. Her ears fell back. She drifted back out of the doorway, back into the hall, and made her best attempt at slipping away toward the kitchen.

Then, the horns shifted. She could just barely see the head of the creature turning toward the doorway, so she jetted to the kitchen, past the fridge, past the unmarked calendar with flowery decorations, past the too-tall kitchen table that was missing the latest crossword, usually set out in front of Blue’s seat. She dashed to the front door, and grabbed at the handle with trembling hands. But the handle was slippery, somehow, and kept dodging away from her fingers. With a snarl, her magic flared, but she didn’t want to _destroy_ the door, not if she needed a wall between herself and her father.

She made one last quick reach for the handle, twisted it, threw herself outside, and then spun around and slammed it shut, panting and sweating.

The door didn’t move. Everything was silent and still. Her breathless panting escalated into hysterical laughter. She’d done it. She got out of that nightmare.

When she turned toward the road into town she froze, ice cold terror burning into every inch of her body.

There was another member of the Tribe of Darkness floating above the road. Purple and red-eyed, waiting silently. There was something in her hand… But Timpani couldn’t quite focus on it. Examining the woman’s hands was like trying to hold onto a bar of soap in the shower.

The woman tilted her head and smiled, eyes narrow, but her expression otherwise calm. As if she was simply examining a bug as she plucked its legs off.

Then, the world came unhinged. The sky broke open like shattered glass, the road came apart in sharp fragments. The light of the world spilled through the cracks and punched pieces of the earth into the air. Timpani grabbed at the door handle and clung to it, but it did no good. Every one of Timpani’s senses, every inch of her being, came alight with the strangest scream she had ever heard. Magic poured out of her hands, and her face, and her chest, until she realized she wasn’t casting it, it was being _sucked_ from her- she couldn’t stop!- until nothing was left except her own blood, and she fell away into nothingness.

She was no longer dreaming. That, she knew. But she also wasn’t awake. Her body was floaty and formless, far away, as if she was watching the world through the television screen. There were some murky sounds, and if she listened, they came into better focus.

It was her home, normal, solid. She was the right size, the lights were on. There were some unfamiliar magnets on the fridge, and pictures of people she didn’t recognize pinned under them, but couldn’t quite make out any details. Her arms and her face were moving, but she wasn’t sure what they were doing. She listened and pulled the image closer.

She saw herself, standing in front of her. This Timpani was terribly upset, she was yelling and gesturing. And she wanted to move to comfort the other Timpani, this was all wrong! This shouldn’t be happening. But her body refused to respond, no matter how hard she tried to reach out. Timpani wanted to comfort her, to apologize, to say everything would be okay, but her mouth only twisted into a wide, cruel smile. She glanced at the wall- the calendar…

The calendar was missing. What day was this? How far in the future?

The other Timpani frowned, and followed her gaze over to the wall. She jolted in realization, and then whipped around to meet Timpani’s eyes again, betrayal and rage spilling out in her tears. Timpani could only listen with a detached fuzziness as her mouth chuckled… It was Blue’s voice, but it didn’t sound like him at all.

Before anything else could happen, the vision faded away, leaving behind a blank warm whiteness. Then, after a moment, even that faded into Tippi’s muddled watery half-vision.

She groaned, laying on her side. She was perched on her little book stand, in Merlon’s house. Soft white light filtered through his windows, lighting up in her sight like hard bars across the wobbling grayness of the rest of the room.

What an outlandish dream she had been having. Her wings stretched and twisted, trying to get her body oriented to take off. What had she been reading, when she fell asleep? Odd, to doze off while reading, but she supposed she had probably worn herself out with errands or spell practice.

The book in front of her had incomprehensible scribbles scrawled out across the pages. Well, no wonder she had been bored to sleep. This wouldn’t do. She fluttered off the book stand and bumbled through the air toward Merlon’s bedroom. She would have to ask him why he had set that little gem of a novel out for her. Internally, she winced; she hoped he wouldn’t tease her for forgetting.

Sometimes magic could get so boring.

Merlon melted into view as she swooped around the doorway. He was sitting on the side of his bed, his aura strong and deep steely blue. In good health, that meant, Tippi noted with satisfaction. She had retained _something_ , at least.

Tippi flitted over to Merlon’s nightstand and perched atop his lamp. Or… was it a lamp? She suddenly wasn’t sure.

“Merlon,” she began.

Merlon’s hood turned toward her, his aura folding around to match. “Yes, my dear?”

“What is this? This thing I’m sitting on,” she asked, twisting her wings to maintain her balance.

Merlon paused. “It’s… nothing, dear.”

“Are you sure? I feel like it’s something…”

“Don’t worry about that.” He reached out and patted her antennae delicately with two fingers.

She hopped back into the air and flapped up to his hood. The cloth on his head. “And this thing?”

“Nothing at all.”

Tippi hummed, irritated. Maybe he could explain the book to her, then. “Could you come take a look at the book stand? I don’t know why you put this one out.”

“Don’t worry about it, Tippi. It’s nothing.” Merlon didn’t get up.

“No, no, look… I can’t read it, there’s something wrong with the words…” Tippi fluttered back out of the room to the book stand. The rest of the room fell away, out of focus, and became even more distant and washed-out. On the book stand sat the Light Prognosticus. It was hazy and colorless, like the stand it rested upon, but the diamond-and-circle design on the cover was unmistakable.

A part of her shrank away at the sight of it, afraid. But she pushed that part aside. _No, this is the_ Light _Prognosticus. It is good, it will help._

She plucked at the cover until it fell open. The page held only more garbled scribbles. Tippi paused. That couldn’t be right… There were some illustrations, farther in, so she tugged at the paper with her feeble magic force until a clump of pages slid from one cover to the other.

 _There_ _we go_. Finally, something that made sense. She could trace the mechanism of the Heart Pillars from memory, the gears and wheels and arcs that would begin to turn with a Heart beating within them. She knew the order of the worlds by heart…

“Merlon,” she called, her antennae quivering. “Do you want to go over the adventure, again?”

“Don’t think about that, my dear.” His airy voice echoed from behind the door. “Everything will fall into place soon.”

Tippi’s wings twitched. Fine, then. She would study it herself. She loved to hear the story. Someday, the Hero of Light would arrive, and defeat the greatest evil the universe had ever seen. She would finally get to watch it in person. As Merlon said, there was no greater joy in life than knowing good would always prevail. This villain’s place was to be crushed under the boot of light.

Merlon knew everything.

Tippi bounced contentedly and flipped another page, satisfied with her overview of the Pillars. Drawn into the next page was a character with a striking red hat.

_I’ve seen that hat…_

“Merlon? Who is this?” Tippi tried one last time. There was a soft shuffling in the next room over.

“Which page are you on?”

“I’m on…” Tippi leaned toward the bottom of the page, but the number was smeared away, as if the ink had bled through. “Um… I don’t know. I can describe the character instead?”

“That won’t be necessary, Tippi. Don’t worry about it.”

“Yeah, no,” the character spoke up.

Tippi recoiled, stumbling back on unsteady feet and knocking the chair behind her over. She stared, wide-eyed, at the moving watercolor illustration.

The character peered down at her from the book stand. “I’m Mario,” it said.

Timpani frowned. That was wrong. She set her hands against the overturned chair leg and pulled herself upright with trembling arms. She fixed her eyeglass back into place. “Not Mario…” she mumbled, leaning in for a closer look.

The character seemed to realize the mistake at the same moment. “Wait, I’m Nastasia. That’s right.” She doffed her hat. “You, um, sounded like you had some questions?”

Timpani’s shoulders sagged, and she reached for the chair behind her. It spun forward until its four legs were again firmly on the tiled floor, and she slumped into it. She rested an elbow against the book stand and massaged her temples. “I wanted…”

She couldn’t remember what she wanted, so she didn’t bother with the rest of the sentence.

Nastasia pulled out a clipboard, mostly inked outline with a tiny splash of faded color. “A quick overview on the Hero of Light. Did I hear that right?”

Timpani ran her gloved fingers through the fluff on her head, and frowned when she felt her horn. Her hat was still missing. She’d lost it somewhere… No matter. “Tell me about the Purity Heart,” she sighed.

“’K. Yeah, I think you’re still missing that memory, boss… Not sure how much I can dig up for you, yet.” Nastasia stepped from her page to the next, and then trotted off the paper. The page flipped, revealing a diagram with eight hearts in a ring around a tiny, shining object that hurt Timpani’s eyes to look directly at. She squinted and turned her attention to Nastasia, who was climbing between the network of lines and scribbles linking the hearts and glancing at her clipboard every few seconds.

Timpani rested her arms on the book stand. “That’s fine… Merlon wouldn’t tell me anything, either.”

Nastasia stopped climbing and flicked her claws against her clipboard. “No, that’s not the problem here, sir. I literally don’t have the information. Neither of you remember what it even looked like.”

“Neither?” A wave of nausea lurched through Timpani’s body. “What do you mean, Nastasia? Neither?”

Nastasia hummed and tapped her chin. Her nail polish was red, today. “You’re really in bad shape, huh, Timpani?”

… Oh.

Nastasia crept to the next page while Timpani sat with her thoughts. She eased herself down to sit on a paragraph of text, and set her clipboard aside. “That guy sure was a jerk… No, yeah, no wonder you blame us. If we’d treated the Count like that, he’d never have recovered at all.”

Timpani slumped forward across the book stand and sobbed as quietly as she could. Nastasia didn’t interrupt.

After a few minutes, Timpani sighed, shaky and exhausted. “The world was made of good guys and bad guys. It was easy that way… clear-cut… He had dedicated his life to fighting you, and so of course I did the same. What else was I supposed to do?”

Nastasia reached up and pulled Mario’s hat off her head. She examined it, thumbing at the fabric of the ‘M’ on the front. “All five of us each thought we were the bad guy.”

“Even Dimentio?”

Nastasia’s shoulders dropped. “… Yeah. Yeah, even Dimentio.”

Timpani raised her fingers to the page and rested them against the paper. Nastasia climbed up onto her hand and sat there instead, within the illustration. Her heart ached with a pained fondness for the tiny woman. Nastasia secured Mario’s hat back on her head. Timpani tilted her head and couldn’t help but smile, just slightly, at how well the red matched her glasses, her lipstick, her nails. She did love to coordinate her outfits, later on.

“What am I to do, Nastasia?” Timpani whispered.

Nastasia bit her lip, picked at her nails. “Well, sir, I guess you’ll blame us, for as long as you want to. But… there was more at play than just us, and you. Like, we were in way too deep, y’know? I don’t quite know what the Prognosticus was… You’d know more about that than I would, boss.”

“Why did you do as it commanded?”

“It wasn’t as simple as that.” Nastasia stood and paced along Timpani’s fingers. “It would have been nice, if it was. Sometimes, we wouldn’t even know what it wanted until we had already done it. We tried to fight it…” She shook her head, tugged the brim of Mario’s hat down over the rims of her glasses.

Timpani scrubbed at her nose with her free hand and sniffled.

“It was like the thing was using our love for each other against ourselves. How do you fight off something that feeds off your strengths and turns them into weaknesses, y’know?” Nastasia flopped backward and sprawled across Timpani’s hand.

Timpani turned her eyes toward the surface of the book stand, for a moment, and examined the intricate markings of the natural wood. Merlon must have had this thing imported…

Nastasia sighed. “We could make choices, but every choice we made was already wrong. Whenever we fought it, that’s exactly what it wanted us to do.”

Leaning her head against her arm, bent over the book stand, Timpani eyed Nastasia for a few more moments. The room was silent. Perhaps Merlon didn’t exist anymore- she was too tired to look around. She lowered her hand, and Nastasia hopped back down to her paragraph.

Timpani hesitated. Then, she closed her eyes. “Who am I, now?”

Nastasia didn’t answer. Maybe she didn’t have one. She supposed it would be odd, for a figment of Blue’s imagination to know who she was supposed to be.

She felt a gentle hand at her shoulder.

“Hi, Blue,” she mumbled into her arm.

“I believe the correct term is, ‘Hey there, Mister Blue’,” he replied, his voice close and warm. The pressure of his hand lifted.

She opened an eye. He was sitting on the ground, next to her chair, in his button-up and red bow tie, and the skirt she bought for him last month. A gentle, fond red eye met hers. He patted the ground next to himself, so with a sigh she slid off the chair and slumped next to him on the intricately tiled floor. He put his arm around her shoulder and leaned in conspiratorially.

“You look good in that cape, you know,” he whispered, and Timpani snorted.

Then she burst into tears, and buried her face in Blue’s shoulder. His other hand touched her back, and it was an awkwardly distant hug, but Timpani took the invitation to curl up against him and wrap her arms around his sides in a more crushing embrace.

He was hushing her with quiet words, but they were lost under Timpani’s ragged breathing. The white light cast through Merlon’s windows stretched across the floor in curled floral patterns. She watched the spots dully, laying against Blue, while he fussed over her clothes.

“Here,” he said, as he teased the glove off her left hand. The fabric pulled off easily, revealing her own hand underneath, with bronze skin, and her thin wedding ring twinkling on her finger. “Does that help?”

“Not really,” Timpani mumbled, staring at her hand, at the little piece of metal. “I don’t know what I’m supposed to do.”

Blue hummed, but didn’t say anything more.

She brought her hand a little closer, and felt Blue’s head turn, to follow her gaze. “I don’t know what I’m supposed to do, now that I don’t know how the world works anymore.”

“… I miss them,” he said eventually.

“I miss my family, too.”

Blue shifted his weight against her shoulder. “Why did you never talk about them?”

“I…” Timpani paused. There wasn’t really a good way to respond. “I didn’t want to make you jealous.”

Blue sighed, and bumped his horn against the side of her head. Timpani stared across the room, at the light playing against the tile, at the way the flooring brightened and sparkled as light washed across.

“Tell me about your siblings,” he said.

“I wasn’t… that close, with any of the three of them,” Timpani admitted. “I was always out doing things… Having little adventures…” She swallowed. “Marcos, I suppose, I confided in most. It’s been so long…”

She curled her fingers against Blue’s shirt. He more gently rested his head against the top of hers.

“I asked him to come along and move out to the coast with me. It would have been nice, to travel with family. Maybe we could have gotten to know each other better. But he didn’t want to leave, and… Well, you know that wouldn’t stop me.”

“Never,” Blue agreed, and Timpani sniffed.

“And there weren’t really many young adults in the village… They had pretty clear gaps, between generations. Everyone was ten years older or ten years younger. I wasn’t… supposed to be living there for long anyway. The Bakers were looking after me while I was, ha…” She gestured, weakly, and Blue put his hand over hers when she returned to his shirt. “Learning to manage my money. Wasn’t much good at it…”

“You didn’t appear to be having much trouble when I met you,” he murmured.

Timpani sighed. “I had to start from scratch, when I found you.”

Blue grunted, and Timpani let his question hang in the air for a moment. She had never wanted to tell him…

“You were in bad shape, when I found you, Blue. You were dying… I had to spend all my savings on a healing potion. You would have bled to death. Heh, you should have heard me shouting down the surgeon…”

“Timpani…”

“I _had_ to, Blumiere.” Timpani scowled. He knew better than to argue. So, she continued. “I never had a friend as close as I became, with you, even back then. Even back when I barely knew you.”

He went silent for a long time. Their surroundings shifted and melted into each other; she wasn’t sure what he was thinking about, that was taking so much concentration. The lights spread across the floor and poured across the two of them. She realized they were leaned back against a stone wall, and wasn’t sure when it had appeared, but it remained solid.

It hit her all at once- Nastasia, O’Chunks, Mimi. Even, perhaps Dimentio- they had all been closer to Blue than she had ever been to him, even now. Because they were sharp. Because they prodded. Perhaps, because, they weren’t afraid to hurt him. Timpani slumped against Blue’s chest, feeling thoroughly emptied.

“It is…” Blue stopped, and tried again. “I miss them terribly, and it is painful to have to discover a gaping hole, where they used to be. But…” Her hair tugged gently as he combed his claw along her head, only making the lightest contact. He made a sound that could either be clearing his throat or whimpering. “That man… Merlon, he left you hurt in an entirely d-different way, yes?”

Timpani remained silent.

“It’s n-no wonder that you f… feel aimless,” he finished, his voice wavering.

“I wouldn’t mind having another big adventure,” she said, motioning with flat hands. “Clearly defined. Go here, get the thing, bring it back.”

Blue huffed, tickling her ear with his breath and her tousled hair. “Y-you and… and me both.”

Timpani felt tears welling up in her eyes again, but it didn’t hurt so badly, this time. She felt his ear attempt to twitch, the tiny muscles working fruitlessly, pinned between her head and his.

“H-how… how do you f-feel about getting, some k-kind of job in town? One with… where you can see lots of p-people every day?”

That was assuming she had _thought_ about working in town…

“Maybe… M-Myriel could aid you, he has… knows a lot of op-options.”

She crept her hand up his chest and tugged at his bow tie. “You don’t need to be nervous, Blue. Do you think you’re burdening me?”

Blue shook his head.

She looked out across the room, which was slowly losing detail as the swaths of light became wider and more intricate. “I don’t want to leave you behind.”

Blue spluttered out a confused laugh. “What?”

“What will you do, if I’m away?”

She felt him smile into her hair. “I’ve been doing better, lately. You know that…”

“Not the last two weeks.”

“Hrmm…”

She adjusted her grip around his back while she waited for him to come up with an excuse.

“We…” _Oh no_. She felt him smirk. “W-we cannot simply be the same person forever.”

Timpani groaned.

“We have to be friends.”

She could one-up him. “We have to be there for each other, not just be each other.”

She knew she’d won when she felt Blue’s mouth and jaw tighten in a pained grimace. “Wouldn’t that be so much easier?”

Timpani snickered.

Blue leaned forward and put a clawed finger to her nose. “Was this dream clear enough for you? Did you listen, this time? Or shall we take a crack at some metaphors again?”

She reached up and grabbed his hand. But then she realized she was simply holding on to his thumb, and sitting upon his palm. The tips of his claws and the rest of his arm were lost in the blinding-white light.

“Thank you for coming,” his voice resonated around her. Only then did she realize how exhausted he sounded.

Timpani opened her mouth to argue, to point out that all she had done was tire him out, but the white began engulfing his hand, so she resigned herself to their exchange. “I’ll ask Georgie if she knows anything I can do around town,” she promised. At that, Blue’s hand relaxed, and the light faded into a murky- but inviting- darkness.

Timpani snapped awake, gasping for air. Their room was pitch dark, and she was far too warm under the blanket. She ran a hand through her hair and slicked it back with her sweat. She took a few steadying breaths, and then squinted around for their clock.

 _1:37_ , the wavering red numbers peeked at her through the darkness.

She kicked off the blanket. But, upon realizing Blue was tangled in her arms and legs, thought better of getting up. She blinked at him a few times, curled up along her stomach. Maybe he would cool off, without the blanket smothering them. She shifted her weight, and pulled Blue closer, and went back to sleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks for reading.  
> i will try to leave these two be and go back to working on the pre-game, and hopefully i will not need to revisit the lovebirds until the actual end of the story. i hope you enjoyed this little foray into their relationship.


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